psychology 114 summaries covering semesters work, which includes the textbook ( Psychology: Themes and Variations by Wayne Weiten) , powerpoint slides, and lecture notes
Psychology is positioning itself as an expert about the human mind, mental processes, and
behavior.
Talk about history of psychology because;
- Can track what the underlying assumptions psychology has used in the past to understand
people.
- And how we use this knowledge from the past to understand ourselves in the present.
Naidoo [1996] argues the history of knowledge psychology has produced at an international and
local level is;
- Steeped in Western / Eurocentric values.
- Promotes a positivist-empirical mode of scientific investigation.
Western / Eurocentric values
Knowledge that reflects the interests and ideas of white, heterosexual, middle class, and educated
American and European societies.
Positivist-empirical science
Knowledge is only considered scientific, valid, true and factual when it is produced under conditions
that are observable, objective, highly controlled and quantified.
HISTORY OF SOUTH AFRICAN PSYCHOLOGY
Divided into two periods;
- South African psychology pre-1994.
- South African psychology post-1994.
SOUTH AFRICAN PSYCHOLOGY PRE-1994
1. South Africa pre-1994 : an apartheid state. [All areas of life affected by policies put in place
during this time].
2. Psychology took up humanitarian role. [Psychology positioned itself as a solver of human
problems and protector of human rights. Psychology called itself as a humanitarian science
pre-1994].
3. Psychology’s authorization of racism. [Psychology gave reasoning that justified racist
practices, they used their authority as a science to justify racism].
4. Psychology documented white people’s lived experiences whilst ignoring black people.
5. Psychology generated a racially skewed process of knowledge production and training.
[Little to no training available for black psychologists – shaped availability of psychologists
today].
6. Psychology produced racially defined diagnostic systems – bantu hysteria vs depression.
[Different sets of diagnostic criteria were used to treat mental health of white people vs
mental health of black people].
7. Psychology objectified black people as the negative “other”.
8. Psychology’s major concern – “poor white people”.
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,Why did South Africa not resist apartheid?
1. South African psychologists indoctrinated into systems of knowledge and ideologies that
left them little room to criticize and challenge racism.
2. Majority of psychologists were white and middle class and they benefitted from apartheid’s
racism.
3. Black psychologists represented under 10% of registered psychologists, so they did not
have a significant no. to create strong resistance.
4. The eugenics movement embraced and supported by psychology during apartheid lead to
ideas that black people are genetically inferior to white people. [Promoted idea white
people are mentally and morally superior to black population because of their genetic
makeup].
5. The "Extension of the University Education Act No. 45 of 1959" - access to the best
universities in terms of funding and resources reserved for white students only.
6. Psychology curriculum was complicit in reproducing racism. [Psychology curriculum was
designed to stop students thinking critically about racism].
7. The Psychological Institute of the Republic of South Africa had a say in the content and
curriculum of psychology programmes at universities.
8. The Publications Act No.42 of 1974 banned more than 18 000 books from universities
because they encouraged critical thinking that could challenge apartheid and racism.
SOUTH AFRICAN PSYCHOLOGY POST-1994
1. Psychology side-stepping subject of racism and race.
2. Reforming psychology – at a professional and institutional level.
3. Removing organized psychology from any ties w. apartheid racism.
4. Creation of new organizations – PsySSA [Psychology Society of South Africa]. [PsySSA
1. is dealing with internal problems regarding racism].
5. Academic reform through research and publishing – shifting production of knowledge to
represent voices that were silenced, marginalized and excluded during apartheid.
6. New forms of marginalization;
- Low rates of publishing from minority of black academics in psychology.
- Black academics stationed at disadvantaged universities where research and
publication are not given priority.
- Black academics burdened w. unusually large volumes of students which left them
little time research and publishing.
- English was medium of publication which largely worked to exclude
blackacademics because they were first language English speakers.
7. The continued use of Western / Eurocentric knowledge in psychology.
8. The racialized nature of professional psychology training programmes.
Substantial barriers remain in removing racist ideologies, which effect practice psychology.
THE DECOLONISATION OF THE PSYCHOLOGY PROJECT
WHAT IS THE DECOLONISATION OF PSYCHOLOGY
Decolonization suggests psychology has strong colonial ties, even at present. Decolonization
of psychology can be understood as questioning and challenging mainstream models of
psychology, which are wrought w. colonial assumptions and ideals [psychologists are
rethinking the knowledge, theoretical models and ideas they use in their everyday practice].
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, MAINSTREAM PSYCHOLOGY
Psychological knowledge and ideas about world that reflect Western / Eurocentric values and
interests, steeped in positivist science, and neglects the social, cultural, political, and historical
contexts in which individuals are embedded.
TWO CONCEPTUAL WAYS TO DECOLONIZE PSYCHOLOGY
Liberation psychology:
Movement within discipline of psychology.
Influenced by contexts w. longstanding histories of colonialism such as SA, South America,
etc.
Overarching goal is social justice.
Recurring emphasis on perspectives, interests and knowledge of oppressed.
3 goals:
- De-ideologizing everyday realities.
- Recovering historical memory.
- Privileging marginalized perspectives.
De-ideologizing everyday realities:
- To reveal and disrupt ideology of everyday realities.
- Everyday realities made up of knowledge: our everyday assumptions about world that
come from variety of sources.
- Everyday knowledge is not neutral, objective, value free and not natural.
- Ideology refers to ways in which meaning creates and sustains unequal power-
relations.
- Everyday experiences contain ideologies, which construct versions of reality for us.
- Aim is to critique the role of ideology and power in dominant institutions like academia
and psychology.
- Recovering historical memory:
- Recovery of repressed historical memories replaced by imposition of colonizer’s
understandings.
- Recovery of historical memory aims to:
• Counteract institutional denial / collective forgetting of historical violence.
• Raise awareness of viable alternatives to colonial violence of modern global order.
• Promotes a reconstruction of identity that provides unity and purpose around
alternative understandings of history and process.
Privileging marginalized perspectives:
- Concerted effort to understand realities of oppressed.
- Give oppressed a voice; give oppressed authorship.
- Allowing oppressed to speak shifts the knowledge, views and perspectives of those
- that are privileged.
- Represents a challenge to authoritative discourses.
- Production of a localized knowledge made by and for people on margins of society.
Cultural psychology:
Considers relationship btwn mind and culture as dynamic and mutually constituted. Mutual
relationship has 2 directions:
- Sociocultural constitution of psychological experience [our individual minds are shaped
by the society and culture in which we live].
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, - Psychological constitution of sociocultural reality [actions and activities of individuals
are what shape the societies and cultures we live in overtime].
Notion of relationship btwn culture and mind / society and individual as mutually constituted can
be used to decolonize psychology based on 2 strategies:
- Normalizing other experience.
- De-naturalizing conventional scientific wisdom.
Normalizing other experience:
- Normalizing experiences of marginalized and oppressed who are usually portrayed as
abnormal.
- Recognizing local experiences w. out need for Western / Eurocentric enlightenment.
- Affirms intellect and humanity of people in marginalized spaces.
De-naturalizing conventional scientific wisdom:
- Questioning relevance and standards of conventional and “natural” scientific knowledge
- Scientific knowledge is inherently Eurocentric and Western, so its relevance especially in
countries that were colonized need to be de-naturalized.
PSYCHOLOGY AND COLONIALISM
- Colonial violence refers to colonizers occupying the land and controlling resources of
colonized / native people.
- Colonial violence also refers to mental colonization / psychological form of colonization.
- Native people suffered deep and severe forms of inferiority complexes regarding skin
colour, identity, culture, ethnicity, etc.
- Colonial violence as form of psychological violence to one’s identity.
FRANTZ FANON
An influential postcolonial writer.
Use his works to engage with:
- What is the decolonization of psychology?
- Why do we need to decolonize psychology?
- Why is Western / Eurocentric knowledge and ideas privileges over the ones of native
people?
Post-colonial studies / postcolonialism:
- Investigates colonial relations btwn the colonizer and colonized.
- Fanon is interest in psychological effects of relationship from perspective of both colonized
and colonizer;
• Dutch and British formally colonized SA, but this colonial period evolved into the
Apartheid regime which is merely an extension of colonialism.
COLONIAL HISTORY IS IMPORTANT FOR TWO REASONS
1 Black and white are not only about skin colour, but more about the meanings attributed to
looking black and white that have been cemented and solidified for hundreds of years.
2 Western / Eurocentric psychological theories end up inadvertently privileging the
consciousness of the colonizer, who are often white, whilst the experiences of black people
and people of colour are neglected.
RACE AND PSYCHOLOGY
HISTORY OF PSYCHOLOGY
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